This invention relates to an electron beam inspection apparatus in which a plurality of inspection points are moved to shorten the inspection time.
The inspection points are arranged by the user arbitrarily and hence in an inefficient order of inspection. To assure efficiency, a method is also available to arrange the inspection points in the form of bellows. In this arrangement in bellows form, however, the inspection time is not necessarily minimized. The inspection time is increased conspicuously due to the increased distance in the inspection of a wafer having a diameter as large as 300 mm. Therefore, the optimization of the order of inspection is required and has not been realized due to the failure to establish an algorithm which completes the calculation in practical calculation time.